Since the mid-2010s, armed Fulani militant groups have carried out escalating attacks on farming communities across Nigeria's Middle Belt, chiefly the states of Plateau, Benue, Kaduna and Taraba, burning homes and churches, kidnapping for ransom and killing residents in raids. A May 2026 investigation by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found that Fulani militants killed more Christians over the preceding year than any other armed actor in Nigeria, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. An estimated 30,000 Fulani militants, organized in groups ranging from a handful of fighters to over a thousand, have driven at least 1.3 million people from Middle Belt farmland into displacement camps. The violence grew out of long standing conflict over land and grazing routes between mostly Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farming communities, and USCIRF's own report cautions that the picture is not simplistic even as it finds Christian communities highly vulnerable within it.
Sources disagree on how far to read this violence as religious persecution rather than a resource conflict between mostly Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farmers, sharpened by climate pressure on grazing land, population growth and the wide availability of small arms. USCIRF's own 2026 report, the atlas's primary source here, explicitly declines a simple religious framing even as it documents Christian communities as disproportionately affected, while some advocacy voices and Nigerian church leaders describe the same violence as a campaign against Christians specifically. This atlas records both readings rather than adopting either as settled.
Facts
Status
Current StatusAs of early 2026, Nigerian prosecutors had arraigned suspects over the Yelwata killings before the Federal High Court in Abuja on a fifty seven count charge, but the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2026 report found that Nigerian federal and state authorities have largely failed to investigate or prosecute the wider pattern of Fulani militant attacks across the Middle Belt, faulting the government for tolerating the violence. 1 Official RecognitionRecognition is contested 1 Recognition BasisNo international body has classified the Middle Belt violence as genocide or crimes against humanity. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2026 report found Fulani militants killed more Christians in the preceding year than Boko Haram or the Islamic State West Africa Province, while noting that religious motivation is not straightforward and that Fulani communities are themselves affected by the same land pressures. Nigeria remains on USCIRF's list of countries it recommends the United States designate a Country of Particular Concern. 1 Origins
Defining MomentOn 13 and 14 June 2025, gunmen attacked Yelwata, a mixed farming settlement in Benue State, killing more than 200 people, most of them women and children, including displaced people sheltering at a Catholic mission compound, and forcing more than 3,000 residents to flee. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2026 report on Fulani militant violence names Yelwata as the deadliest single episode of the period it reviewed. 1 Open Questions
Death Toll AssessmentNo monitor publishes a death toll isolated to religiously motivated killing within Nigeria's Middle Belt specifically. National and Nigeria-wide casualty figures conflate at least three distinct, overlapping conflicts: farmer-herder disputes over land and grazing routes, Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgent violence concentrated further northeast, and communal or ethnic violence with no religious dimension. USCIRF's own reporting on the region documents individual attacks and community-level death counts but publishes no aggregate figure that separates the religious dimension of Middle Belt violence from these other causes. 1 USCIRF's reporting on Fulani militant violence against Nigerian Christians documents the pattern in detail without offering a campaign-wide death toll isolated from Nigeria's wider farmer-herder and insurgent violence. No other monitor consulted publishes a religiously-isolated aggregate either, the same conflation problem that limits any Middle Belt displacement ceiling as well. The Event
When It HappenedOngoing, with escalating violence since the early 2000s and continuing into the present. 1 Victim GroupChristian farming communities across Nigeria's Middle Belt, chiefly in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna and Taraba states, whose villages and displacement camps have been the targets of raids, alongside Muslim communities caught in the same underlying land conflict. 1 Perpetrator RegimeArmed Fulani militant groups, organized in clusters of roughly ten to over a thousand fighters, operating across Nigeria's Middle Belt and increasingly its southern states. USCIRF's 2026 report identifies them as nonstate actors distinct from the government of Nigeria, which the same body continues to recommend the United States designate a Country of Particular Concern over its own record on religious freedom. 1 Consequences
Displaced (Low Estimate)The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's May 2026 report on Fulani militant violence found attacks have displaced at least 1.3 million people across Nigeria's Middle Belt, many now living in overcrowded camps described as unsanitary and unsafe. This is the campaign's own cumulative displacement figure, not a count tied to a single incident, and no separate whole campaign death toll aggregate could be found to accompany it. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Africa directly: "Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province."
This source names Boko Haram directly: "armed actor in Nigeria, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province."
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
What Is the Death Toll of the Persecution of Christians in Nigeria's Middle Belt?
USCIRF and other monitors document individual attacks and community-level deaths from Fulani militant violence against Nigerian Christians in the Middle Belt in detail, but no monitor separates a religiously motivated death toll from Nigeria's wider, overlapping farmer-herder and insurgent violence, so no campaign-wide aggregate isolated to religious persecution exists.
What would resolve this A researcher or monitoring organization's systematic count of deaths in Middle Belt violence specifically attributable to religious targeting, distinguished from farmer-herder land disputes and from Boko Haram or ISWAP insurgent violence further northeast.
Human rights documentation, conflict studies specific to the Nigerian Middle Belt.United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nonstate Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants
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